Fooled me

People can say what they want, but spring is NOT here. Saturday was nice and sunny, but the wind was freezing and as I walked home yesterday the ground was again covered in snow. It isn't as romantic as it sounds in this city, where snow turns to slush in a matter of minutes and speeding cabs spray you with dirty water.

The weekend was an unusually cultured one, for my standards. On Friday I met Pia at the Guggenheim right after work to get tickets for the "El Greco to Picasso" exhibition on Pay What You Wish Friday. The queue went halfway around the block despite the icy winds, but those who braved it were rewarded with a really good collection of Spanish art from the 15th to the 20th century. We then rested our feet in front of the fireplace at the Skypad, where Colin and Bill were waiting with a great movie and a TV dinner.

Saturday morning Colin and I had brunch with Stew, who put me up on my first night in Boston six months ago. He was visiting for the weekend, and we showed him some Viennese breakfast quality at Sabarsky.
In the evening things became even more Viennese when Pia, the boys and I met for dinner and the Magic Flute at the Met. In my more cultured years, when I was eight or nine years old, I remember lying on my stomach in front of my parents' stereo listening to that opera. The art director, Tony-winner Julie Taymor who also did the set design for Lion King, really managed to turn that old story into a magical fairy tale with her dancing puppets. After three solid hours of Mozart we turned to some live jazz and had a drink at the Carlyle. We brought the age average down by about 50% in that place, but loved it nevertheless.

On Sunday morning we dragged our sleep-deprived bodies out of bed for oatmeal and Eggs Benedict at Balthazar, followed by Mass and an exhibition of a Mexican schizophrenic painter, Martin Ramirez, at the American Folk Art museum. I had never heard about or seen outsider art before, and was pretty impressed by the talent of a poor Mexican immigrant who was locked away in a mental ward most of his life and refused to communicate in any way except through his artwork.

Finally, we put some "pop" into our cultural mix and watched the Oscars with Thierry, who is a film producer and also happens to be a friend of Florian Henckel-Donnersmark, who took home the little golden guy for this year's Best Foreign Film.
There was a lot of cheering and toasting.